A new American tells of a friendship distorted by communism

Wendy Yi served 18 months in the Heizuizi labor camp, Changchun, China. She became a U.S. citizen in 2018. She lives in Secaucus.

By Wendy Yi

This year marks the 70th anniversary of communist rule in China. While my friends, relatives and the whole Chinese nation enjoy the anniversary, I feel compelled to share a sad story that keeps re-playing in my head, as vivid as ever.

I used to teach at Jilin University in Changchun, a city in northeastern China. Each year, we welcomed a new class of students into our classrooms, and we often become friends with some of them.

17 years ago, I had developed a close friendship with one of my students, a sweet, kind and warm country girl from a poor family in Shandong province. As our relationship grew with the progression of the school year, she began to confide in me and sought my advice on many social and personal issues.

One day, before her graduation, she came to me and said that she planned to take a civil service test to become a prison or labor camp guard. That idea totally caught me off guard. Why would someone with a college degree want to work in a prison? I tried hard to dissuade her, but she seemed to have already made up her mind. She said it was a big financial burden for her family to support her college education and since she was an only child, she wanted to have a secure job and be able to pay them back.

In the 1990s, Qi Gong, a Chinese word for a combination of meditation and martial-arts exercises, became very popular in China. Among them, the most widely recognized and practiced form was Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong.

This ancient practice was introduced to the broader society by Master Li Hongzhi in 1992 in Changchun, the same city where I was teaching. Consisting of a set of simple exercise movements and a core teaching around the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, people who took up the practice soon experienced enormous health benefits and found themselves striving to be good, kind, tolerant and responsible in their daily social interactions.

In my university, hundreds of students, teachers and university staff took up the practice. I also became a Falun Gong practitioner and dearly enjoyed the improved health and moral uplift brought about by the practice.

Unfortunately, the good days did not last long.

By 1999, Falun Gong’s popularity had soared to between 70 million to 100 million practitioners, according to official Chinese government estimate. Fearing Falun Gong’s popularity might challenge the Communist Party’s power, the Chinese government decided to ban the practice and launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate Falun Gong.

After the purge began, I was harassed and forced to denounce my Falun Gong practice. By refusing to give up my belief, I barely managed to hold onto my teaching job at the university. However, in 2003, one of my students reported me to the 610 office (a dedicated government agency with extrajudicial power to persecute Falun Gong) for trying to tell people about the government’s deceptions in class.

As a result, I was arrested by the police and sent to a labor camp like millions of other Falun Gong practitioners.

One morning in the labor camp, I heard a familiar voice calling my name. It was my former student, the girl from Shandong. She worked there as a prison guard, and was quite surprised to see me there. She told me that she believed my innocence and assured me she would take extra care of me inside the camp. I looked at her in the face and noticed tears in her eyes. “You will always be my teacher,” she cried.

The next time I saw her was two weeks later. By then, her attitude had completely changed. She was aloof. She said her supervisor warned her about my case and forbade her to see me again or offer any help. I felt sad to witness this change in her.

From that day on, I only saw or heard her from a distance as she was yelling, slapping and beating Falun Gong practitioners as old as her grandma’s age. Although I could not tell the exact cursing words, I could feel her rage. I could not believe that was the student I once knew - the kind and warm girl from Shandong province.

About six month later, she approached me again for the last time. She behaved like a seasoned prison guard with a fierce facial expression and cold speaking voice. She forced me to denounce Falun Gong and threatened to revoke my family’s visiting right.

My heart was broken and I was speechless. How could a suppressive regime transform a fine and decent human being into a coldblooded abettor?

Those encounters over six months engraved a deep scar in my mind. I cannot erase the contrasting images: an image of a kind and warm country girl and that of a cold and fierce prison guard.

Seventy years of tyranny is a long time for a country to endure. Millions of people in my homeland are still deprived of truth, freedom and even life. I continue to think of my family, my friends, my colleagues and my students in China, and hope that one day they’ll be able to see the end of this suppressive communist regime.

Wendy Yi served 18 months in the Heizuizi labor camp, Changchun, China. She became a U.S. citizen in 2018. She’s a translator for New Tang Dynasty TV in New York and lives in Secaucus.